GPs urged to enlist MPs in fight over imposed contract
GPs have been encouraged to write to their MP to raise concerns about the imposed GP contract for this financial year, as part of collective action organised by the BMA.
This is in addition to the union’s latest escalation of collective action against the contract, which involves refusing new shared care agreements and any ‘informal requests’ for hospital specialist treatment to be transferred from specialists to GPs.
GPs should use a BMA tool to send a letter to their MP and include specific details about the pressures their individual practice is facing.
The GPC said: ‘We are asking practices to raise your concerns about the current contract and the future of general practice directly with your local MP – who will shortly go into parliamentary recess for the summer and will have more time in their constituency.
‘It is the ideal moment for practices to coordinate a letter-writing campaign and we have tried to make this as simple as possible for you with our online tool.
‘You can use this tool to write to your MP and urge them to support their local practices by holding Government to account.
‘The letter calls on MPs to raise our concerns directly with Government and ask them to address the issues we have raised regarding safety, funding and data and demand they work with us to resolve them for our patients and the future of general practice.’
Practices have also been urged to ask patients to sign an open letter asking the Government to invest in more GPs and better premises to ‘guarantee the future of patients’ ability to access general practice’.
The letter patients will be asked to sign said: ‘It is shocking that GP practices receive just 36p per day for each patient they care for, less than the cost of a supermarket apple.
‘We need be reassured that when our parents, friends or any one of us need help, our GPs will still be there for us. It is extraordinary to think that nearly 20% of surgeries have disappeared since 2015, placing more pressures on the practices that remain.
‘Please don’t allow this to get worse. Give GP practices the funding they need to care for their patients, and protect the care that our families rely on every day.’
As part of collective action, GPs have already been asked to remove or ignore any non-contractual medicines optimisation software for new prescriptions, and to notify their ICB that they are stopping voluntarily sharing data using a template letter provided by the union’s GP committee.
Earlier this year, the committee said it would announce new actions to escalate the dispute each month, should the Government fail to provide ‘sufficient concessions’ on the imposed contract.
The committee has recently elected a new chair, Dr Clare Bannon, who has said she is ‘prepared to act’ to pursue a plan B for general practice ‘as necessary’.
